Li Yanhua has thought about the various possibilities of life. Being a director is her little interest, but she still has the "big goal" of life - if possible, she still wants to be a government official.
text ｜Chinese Entrepreneur reporter Liang Xiao
edited ｜Mina
head pictures photography ｜Shi Xiaobing
Li Yanhua is not the head of the financial institution of that type of " facial ".
They may also be interesting and talkative in private. But once you sit in the interviewee's position, you start to speak sternly, and the content is meticulously limited between numbers, models and professional terms. You rarely reveal your personal views on things, as if you are worried that if you are inappropriate, you will lose your "rigor" as a financial practitioner.
is considered rigorous and professional, and Li Yanhua deserves it. You should know that she won the gold medal in the International Internal Registered Auditor Examination (CIA) in 2001. She is the first Chinese to win the award since the examination began in 1974. However, in the two-hour interview, she didn't even mention this matter. She didn't like to use difficult-to-solve professional terms. She prefers to simplify complex problems, such as explaining the gains and losses of budget management. She said she should "keep the bird in a cage" rather than "putting on watermelon skin"; she also likes to pay attention to the most cutting-edge technologies - the Internet of Things, blockchain, and the metaverse. Once each technology comes out, she will go deep into ; she also mentioned her family, "I like to play with my granddaughter on weekends." When it came to her rise, she simply took off her royal blue suit top, which contained the simplest white T-shirt, "I'm so hot."
Li Yanhua, who speaks directly and communicates casually, is a financial "veteran". In 1996, she bid farewell to the National Audit Office , which she had been in the industry for 12 years, and joined Taikang Group, a private enterprise that has now ranked among the Fortune 500, was just established at that time. In 26 years, she served as the head of finance, risk control and auditing, and served as a "support" and went to the front line of the business of the Beijing branch to "lead troops" and later took charge of Taikang Pension Insurance Co., Ltd. and led the company into the fast lane of development.
Now, she is the chairman of Taikang Pension and the executive vice president of Taikang Group. Has she ever imagined other choices in the business world for more than 20 years?
Source: Visual China
Employees who are familiar with her guess she might want to become a director because in many filming, she would put forward her own ideas on the scene angle, camera position setting, and link setting; the 10th anniversary of Taikang in 2006 was planned by her. The grand and grand "popularity" at that time is still fresh in memory of many people. The song "I Love You Taikang" that is widely sung by Taikang and still finale on the 25th anniversary of Siqing was also created by her.
But she herself has another answer. Being a director is her little interest, but she also has the "big goal" of life. "If possible, I still want to be a government official," said Li Yanhua.
She mentioned the book "Step Ahead", which is written by Facebook's chief operating officer, , one of the most famous women in Silicon Valley . It talks about women who should "sit at the table" bravely and confidently and fully realize their self-worth. "The world is becoming more and more complex. Women also have their own unique advantages in handling complex problems and should play an increasingly important role." Li Yanhua said, "Public policies will affect the development of the entire country and society, so I think that compared with business, politics will benefit more people."
"Grandma Li"
Privately, Taikang elderly care employees occasionally call her "Grandma Li".
Li Yanhua also knew about this, "Maybe because I am powerful, my management is quite strict, but no one dared to call me in person."
Speaking of this, "Grandma Li" smiled again.She usually likes to laugh, which makes her look more approachable; she will "go out for a walk" from time to time to talk to grassroots employees about their problems and difficulties. She even coordinates and "commands over the level" at the moment.
She spoke out loud and never hid it - this was deeply felt even in a brief interview, and she would criticize the employees who made mistakes without hesitation. Her "most unbearable mistake" is "making troublesome arguments", "If things are done wrong, you have to face them. If the result is wrong, I cannot forgive the process." She also doesn't like people who report on small reports very much. "The team needs to understand and help each other, not to undermine each other."
Source: China Essential Library
However, sometimes meetings are assigned tasks, and some employees say on the spot that they can't do it, and she can only suppress her emotions. "I have no choice but to have any opinions. Maybe his ability is really not enough, and they are just seeking truth from facts." Li Yanhua would not mind such "confrontation". "The leader is not that stingy, right?"
At least she is not a "small" leader. She can understand and be polite to employees, but in the position of leading the army, she must put down her tenderness and show her iron fist. More often than not, it is a balance between these two roles. For example, during the epidemic, Taikang Elderly Assessment Management of employees is even stricter than usual, and she also has more considerations between advancing and retreating. "Actually, I can understand it very well from the heart. The epidemic will affect work status and work results. But if you relax now and disband the team, what should you do in the future? That is greater irresponsibility to employees." Li Yanhua said, "When encountering this kind of crisis, the leader must be the most spiritual person, and should stand up the most, otherwise everyone will lie flat."
In fact, when the epidemic first started, Taikang's elderly care and development industry encountered great difficulties, and all projects were stopped all at once. Li Yanhua quickly made adjustments, launching online training in the company and strengthening online operations. Later, a purely online operation project in Guangdong achieved a standard premium of nearly 4 million yuan. This model was also quickly replicated, ensuring that Taikang Pension still maintained the positive growth of various businesses despite the repeated epidemic situation.
"The most difficult battle"
"hard and soft" Li Yanhua has also brought out a team that can compete and fight. At present, Taikang's retirement service has more than 10,000 employees, and many people in the core management team are all old subordinates who have been fighting for more than ten years with Li Yanhua. In the past ten years, Taikang's retirement service has also experienced a difficult journey of thorns and dangers.
The story started in 2010. That year, Li Yanhua, who was nearly 50 years old, encountered the most difficult battle in his life.
Two and a half years ago, she was just promoted to the vice president of Taikang Life Insurance, but she volunteered to go to the Beijing branch. No one would have thought that this "scholar" who has been working silently in the backstage of auditing, risk control and other years, after more than 800 days of hard work on the front line, increased the core value business of Beifen from 83 million yuan to 197 million yuan, and the total premium increased from 3.9 billion yuan to 5.5 billion yuan - even Chen Dongsheng, founder, chairman and CEO of Taikang Group, was overjoyed and said that Beifen had found the feeling of first love again.
After this battle, Chen Dongsheng must have seen Li Yanhua's ability to lead troops to fight. So when Li Yanhua retired and decided to return to the headquarters' "old business", Chen Dongsheng sent her to Taikang for retirement.
At that time, Taikang Nursing had just been established for 3 years, and all businesses were in the initial stage, developing the market, sorting out the team, finding customers, and exploring models. The complicated work made Li Yanhua feel that he couldn't start.
During that time, she was so anxious that she couldn't even sleep. When it was the most difficult time, she ran to Xiangshan with a few tomatoes and lay under a big tree at the entrance to the north gate for a whole day, "and felt that her mind was burned out."
Even in this case, she had never thought of giving up. She once said, "If it was a war era, the leader asked me to capture the mountain in front of me, and I would rush forward if I died." Her family also knew her personality and said that she "definitely faced difficulties and would not avoid it."
faces difficulties and understands them well. 12 years of work experience at the National Audit Office have made Li Yanhua good at grasping the macro and grasping core contradictions and key nodes. In the first year, she formulated a mechanism of "reverse-force profit management" to turn Taikang's elderly care pension into profits. Since then, in order to continuously enhance her hematopoietic ability, she extended her business from corporate customers to corporate employees. This model will be followed by peers in the future, and Taikang's elderly care pension has become a model leader from an industry laggard.
At this time, Taikang's retirement care was truly on the right track of development. Li Yanhua also felt relieved. In summary of those years, in her own words, it was "working hard and exhausted." "During that period, I really knew the true meaning of the two idioms 'breaking through obstacles' and 'bruising all over the body'," said Li Yanhua.
But that was also the most rewarding years. Looking back on that "History of the War of Resistance Against Japan", many combat experiences have been preserved and become part of Li Yanhua's management experience and strategic sandbox. The first thing is to listen to the voices of "front". She will often chat with front-line business partners through WeChat to use this as the basis for decision-making; in addition, we must look at the overall situation, one is the macro and the other is the market, so that we can make arrangements in advance. Often, before the relevant policies are issued, Taikang's elderly care business preparations are being steadily advanced.
Under this premise, we must also make quick decisions and race against time in the market battle. At first, this made Li Yanhua a little uncomfortable. She is a Virgo and pursues perfection. "Sometimes she is quite tangled and considers a lot", but in the position of chairman, she "have to make bold decisions and make quick decisions."
The change brought to Taikang's retirement by this decisive chairman is also obvious to all. Since the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security publicly disclosed data in 2013, Taikang Pension Enterprise Annuity Trusteeship Scale has been ranked first in the industry in the average annual growth rate of the trusted assets under the pension has expanded from 6 billion yuan at the end of 2012 to more than 300 billion yuan at the end of 2021. Today, Taikang Elderly Care has assisted the government in 29 provinces and 164 prefectures and cities across the country to carry out pilot management of payment by disease type, DRG, chronic disease management, serious illness insurance, and long-term care insurance, and has served more than 490 million people in total.
Source: Visual China
"Every line of " People in the World " I feel the same way"
"I have experienced the most difficult part, and now I don't think anything is difficult." Li Yanhua said. She described her current state as "live and find work to do it."
The day before the interview, Li Yanhua just made an important decision. Taikang Elderly Care will build a health management platform APP in the future to provide customers with services including remote video consultation, drug delivery to home delivery and other services. This matter is difficult to promote. More importantly, the project requires long-term investment and may not make ends meet the cost at the beginning.
In fact, Li Yanhua, who was an auditor, is very alert to those loss-making projects because it will dampen the enthusiasm of employees and management, but she is also not hesitant to make "strategic investment" in doing a "long-term career". How can a career with long-term value? In her opinion, it is also very simple, it depends on whether it is beneficial to the people. If the answer is yes, then the direction is right, and there will definitely be market prospects in the future.
Even so, Li Yanhua will make sufficient risk predictions in advance, which may be related to her years of risk control and management work. Before making decisions, she will imagine the worst case. As the "trustee" of insurance assets, insurance institutions are actually managing money for the people, so they cannot make major mistakes. Therefore, unlike the rapid iteration and trial-and-error innovation of Internet products, financial products require more steady innovation, and make decisions after making decisions.This is the layout of
in government serious illness insurance projects. As early as many years ago, Taikang planned to vigorously develop this business, but at that time, Taikang's elderly care had no team, institutions, and funds. At the same time, the government did not have a profit or loss adjustment mechanism, so it was difficult to effectively conduct risk analysis and risk control. Over the years, many projects undertaking in the early stage were operating at losses.
So, in the face of this opportunity to develop business, Li Yanhua did not blindly follow up, but gradually made capacity reserves, such as participating in the "flight inspection" project of the state and local medical insurance bureaus, and assisting local governments in establishing a medical insurance credit system. In the past few years, a team of more than 300 people with medical background has been trained, and more abundant operational experience has been accumulated. In 2021, Taikang Elderly Care has mobilized the entire company to undertake the urban and rural residents' serious illness insurance project in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, which has been recognized by relevant government departments, and at the end of the last year, the balance of income and expenditure was basically achieved, which also makes Taikang Elderly Care more confident in promoting the "Guangxi Model" to more cities and regions.
"Chairman (Chen Dongsheng) said that business is good, and business must also be in business. These two aspects complement each other," said Li Yanhua. "Only by doing things that are meritorious to the people, can the company be guaranteed to continue to develop healthily, contribute to the country, and truly benefit society."
She is the group of entrepreneurs born around the 1960s. They have experienced multiple changes in society, reform and opening up, and experienced huge changes in China's economy. When watching "The World", she cried several times, "Every line is empathetic." A collective memory left by that era is about the feelings of family and country.
So, if she is not an entrepreneur, she hopes to continue to be a civil servant and benefit more people's livelihood with policies. A Taikang Elderly Employee mentioned that the company has given insurance to 5.02 million medical staff in more than 8,800 hospitals across the country in the past two years, and has completed the compensation work of 6.4 million yuan for 32 medical staff who died in the fight against the epidemic nationwide. No matter what the reason why the medical staff who received the insurance passed away, they will contact the compensation as soon as they see the relevant news. This is also something Li Yanhua emphasized to them in particular.
